Obituary: James Roberts, World War II veteran

Every day for two years during World War II, Helen Roberts wrote letters to her fiancé, who was flying bombing missions over Germany.

"It was a nightmare waiting for him," she said.

James K. Roberts was part of the 100th Bomb Group, also known as the "Bloody Hundredth" for the overwhelming casualties it suffered during the war.

Before he returned home to Minnesota in 1945, he completed 22 bombing missions. He flew over Berlin and Kiel, and was involved with the firebombing of Dresden.

"Thank God he returned," Helen Roberts said. "I was fortunate my sweetheart came home, because a lot of them didn't."

James Roberts returned and married her in the spring of 1946. And they were inseparable for 68 years.

James Roberts died Dec. 2. He was 90, and lived in Edina.

Roberts served in the U.S. Army, 8th Air Force, 100th Bomb Group, 349th Bomb Squadron as a radio operator and a waist gunner on board a B-17 Flying Fortress aircraft.

During one of his flights, his plane was shot down by German forces in France and crash-landed. He and his crew were saved by French Resistance patrols. They were smuggled into England, where "he got on another plane and then went back in the air and bombed Germany some more," Gary Roberts said.

Helen Roberts remembers her friends hiding newspapers with stories about bombers who were downed. "We had our own nightmares, those of us back home," she said. "That was our war. It was just a nightmare."

James wrote her every day, but she got the letters in bunches. He wrote of how much he missed her, and she wrote to him about events at home. He came home in May 1945, and they were married about eight months later.

They had two children, Gary and Nancy, and lived in a "ticky-tacky" house in Richfield, Helen said. It was a small, happy home.

Gary Roberts' favorite memories of his father include their time hunting and fishing. It was during these trips that James Roberts would share his motto with his son: "Always give more than you take."

James and Helen Roberts traveled the world in their later years. They visited Germany and Russia, and traveled to France, where the American casualties of D-Day are buried. He took her to Thorpe Abbotts in eastern England, at the airfield where he was stationed during the war.

The trip rekindled memories, some good and others bad, she said.

Said Gary Roberts: "I'll always remember him as easygoing, quick-witted and an interesting man of his times."